Onyx 2.0 Provides a New Take on Sequencing

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Jasmine Music Technology, together with NTONYX, announced its flagship product - Onyx 2.0, an intelligent sequencer/arranger, intended to add creativity and speed to music creation.

For more than 20 years, sequencers for midi editing have focused on elementary events like notes and controllers. But communicating with each other, musicians use such high-level concepts as key/scale, tune, chord, pattern and manner of playing - something that sequencers fail to "understand" completely.

Onyx 2.0 operates not only with notes, but with musical objects which have certain properties such as harmony type, performance manner, instruments, and meter. Of course, these features can be adjusted in a range of parameters. Musical objects can be morphed with one another. This simplifies the arranging process.

Onyx creates musical objects (named OOStyles - Onyx Orchestrator Styles) from ready midi-files or recorded fragments. This allows the musician to create a song from 2-3 slices (for example, a verse and a refrain) He or she just has to specify some crucial parameters, and the program does the rest. 100 OOStyles included in Onyx basic package and 400 OOStyles are available for free download from the company's web site.

Onyx Musical Object Morphing (MOM) is able to make any song sound in the manner of any other song (e.g. Jingle Bells in the style of Metallica). It is possible to change the harmony, tune, style, performing manner, even the rhythm and meter of a style in any way you like. Or to keep them as they are - in this case they will be preserved to the smallest detail - volume, pitch and even tempo nuances.

NTONYX has collected harmonization rules for the majority of musical styles and genres. This resulted in Intelligent Auto-Harmony (IAH), used in Onyx 2.0. The program offers a choice of harmonization variants for your melody. Onyx knows more than 100 types of chords. Just give the program orders about genres.

Onyx is on purpose arranged as a conventional sequencer or a multitrack editor. It comes complete with all the familiar tracks, clips and effects (midi-effects are included in the package). Onyx has sequencer functions that a common computer musician is already probably used to, but the program's strength is that of an intelligent auto-arranger. Onyx can also be an assistant for music training in harmonies, accompaniment rules and arrangement.

Planned future releases of Onyx will add audio and support for DXi and VST instruments, enhanced by Performance Modelling.

System Requirements:

• 500 Mhz processor
• Windows-compatible sound card
• 128 MB RAM
• 30 MB hard-disk space for program installation
• Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP

Jasmine Music Technology page: www.jasminemusic.net

NTONYX page: www.ntonyx.com

www.jasminemusic.net/onyx20.htm - main product page www.jasminemusic.net/onyx20_examples.htm - examples